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Saturday, November 02, 2013

The Bali flight
from Perth was full of screaming children and parents trying to look cool and
be cool. Some made it. Other didn’t. Me? Can’t remember. I was so tired it was all
a blur. All that remains in memory are the screams.

Denpassar Airport
is new, very new. We got off the plane and gathered in a huge barn and lined up
in long queues that seemed to take a week to reach the immigration desk, where
I received a smile, which was nice.

Outside in
the flurry of names held up by eager taxi drivers I could see no name that
looked like mine, so I chose one at random and finished up in Kuta with a group
of chartered accountants attending an international conference on global money
transfers.

Sorry, I
made that up. What happened was someone up the back yelled at me because they
remembered me from last year and because they once had a farm in Denmark, just
down the road from Albany, and they knew me by face.

There were
other faces in the Ubud cluster and one of them belonged to Julian Burnside, so
I told him the name of my face and he told me the name of his. I reminded him
we were in a session together, People of Letters. He asked me if I knew what it
was about. I pretended I had no idea because he said he didn’t and I didn’t
want to embarrass him in front of the others. Later, I realised I had no idea
too, but the realisation helped me to discover the secret, to adapt, and make a
good fist of it. Something similar must have happened to Julian because his
fist turned out all right too.

That sorted
I got in a taxi with Ian Burnett and his delightful partner whose name sits in
my memory as a sound but I have no way of knowing how it looks as a word and so
will not write it as a word in order to save embarrassing both of us. Mainly
me. Ian wrote a book about the spice trade with all its murder, mayhem and
romance and called it Spice Islands.

The long
drive up the hill to Ubud with Wayan (first born man) was a lot of fun and full
of lively discussion, most of which I can no longer remember because of the
floating cloud in my brain and the constant battering from the lack of sleep drums
and the residual screams.

On arrival
in Ubud we drove around for what couldn’t have been a day but felt like it,
trying to find a way through the road works to Ian’s resort. I never saw him
again. But I did get to Honeymoon Guest House No 1, owned by the wondrous Janet
DeNeefe, Festival Founder and Director and the master of cool, Ketut Suardana,
Chair of the Mudra Swari Saraswati Foundation, the not-for-profit organisation behind
the festival.

And so it
all began, one mad rush through sumptuous feasting, thrilling panelling,
intense, lively and intimate conversations with people you know, people you
never met, then did, and loved in an instant, and people you have admired for
decades who suddenly appear in front of you with your book in their hand asking
for your signature and you want to refuse because they don’t seem to understand
that you are not worthy because of the image you hold of them in your mind’s
memory of fine and great people.

Exhausting.

Here are a
very small collection of highlights. The true and honest list is too long and I
would have to live it all again and not sleep again and my doctor has given me
instructions I must obey if I am to live longer than my father.

Catching
half of the David Vann – Legend of a
Suicide - and Jennifer Byrne conversation. David was funny, sad and behaved
like an American who has left his country for New Zealand, which he has. If he
talks in a place near you, go listen.

The Richard
Flanagan – The Narrow Road to the Deep
North - Michael Cathcart chat was engaging and insightful. All about war
and love and family and fragility.

Laki Laki
Yang Lucu was a session all about comedy and a pleasure to be sitting beside
Tom Doig, Morris Gleitzman and Ernest Prakasa and the hilarious Khairani
Barokka. If you look them all up you will notice they all carry credentials and
I’m pretty sure each and every one of them hit me with theirs at least once
during the discussion.

Jalan Jalan
meant a long walk on a wonky ankle but I met others worse off and the lush paddy
fields filled our souls with hope and when we arrived at Sari Organik we were tired
but ready for another sumptuous feast and travel tales and who better to yarn
with than two seasoned walkers and talkers, Jan Cornall and Claire Scobie.

The Second
Sex Debate was full of lies and cons and featured a stand up stoush between the
champion on my team, on any team, Olin Monteiro, and a woman in the
audience. It was a thrilling encounter and reminded us all that Indonesia is,
in practise, a democracy. Others on the team were Wayan Juniatha, who last year
took me to West Timor and left me there, Florence Williams, a rare American
presence, Tom Doig, an insane and funny New Zealander, and Clementine Ford, an
hilarious feminist from Adelaide. We were all chaired with charm and wit by
Chip Rolley, once director of the Sydney Writers’ Festival.

My personal highlight was a gripping session with Ben Quilty and
Augustinus Wibowo. Both men spoke with quiet intensity about their experiences
in Afghanistan. Ben won the 2011 Archibald with his painting of Margaret Olley
and was in Kandahar as the Official War Artist for the Australian War Memorial.
Augustinus is an Indonesian travel writer with a fascination for the Afghanistan
most of us know nothing of. Both men spoke from deep places about their experiences
but what struck me was the startling revelation that rape was an issue on both
sides of the security fence. Augustinus spoke about the local tradition of
Playboys, these are young men older men buy, or hire, or win over, for their
sexual peasure. Augustinus told of being sexually harassed as he travelled
through the country. When Ben arrived at the Kandahar base he was handed a “rape
whistle” by the camp commandant because a few days before a young Dutch soldier
had been raped by five American soldiers and that rape was a constant problem
at the base. I, like many others in the audience, sat dumb with horror in our
minds, hearts and souls.

Do you mind if I finish on a happy note? Thank you.

I had the pleasure of working with the fabulous People of Letters team –
Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire. These two wonders arrived in Ubud from Jakarta
where they had presented a Women of Letters. In Ubud they presented another mob
of Women with their notes and then us, the people. On the team and reading were
Julian Burnside, Cate Kennedy, Claire Bowditch, Ketut Yuliarsa and Morris Gleitzman.
Our instructions were to write to the thing which we wished we had written. And
we did. And the laughs came thick and fast. Eventually, it is possible, rumour
has it, these letters may appear in a book.

Now, to the conversational highlights. To be fair, there were many,
because if there is something I love, it is an intense and intimate conversation.
I won’t name names, except one, Bob Connolly, that great Australian documentary
film maker. Here’s how it happened.

I join a cluster at the Australian Embassy cocktail party. There is a
flurry and I am in the middle and running four conversations at the same time. Someone
says Bob Connolly would like you to sign your book for him, the one you wrote
about boarding school, Boy on a Wire.
I stop them and ask, who did you say? They repeat and I turn to see the great
man standing there with my book in his hands and I go down on a knee and refuse
to sign until he recognises that I have long admired his work and that I am but
a boy and naive and innocent in the wilderness of artistic endeavour. He takes
pity on me and helps me to my feet, saying he can feel my pain because his
knees aren’t too good either and then he introduces me to his partner Sophie Raymond
and it is she who has told me who he is as though I don’t know but I do and the
next day Bob and me huddle together like two old men who have known each other
forever and talk a talk that belongs to him and me.

Just in case you have forgotten Bob’s work: Mrs Carey’s Concert, Rats in
the Ranks, Facing the Music, First Contact, Black Harvest, Joe Leahy’s
Neighbours.

Did I mention where I stayed? I think I did, the Honeymoon
Guesthouse No 1. And, yes, it was a hot-bed of conversation. Will I name names?
No. But I remember them all. (I’m writer, I keep notes.)

Finally, the big question: Do I love the Ubud Writers’ and
Readers’ Festival? What a dumb question. It fills me, enriches me, I come home changed.footnote:Jon Doust's passage to Ubud was made possible by a grant from the Department of Culture and the Arts through it's Artflight program.